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The MDP library...

Thursday, August 16, 2012

And in conclusion...

Janet...people...people...Janet. You've been introduced.

What could traditional publishing learn
from the Indies? And how about the other way around?

In my
opinion, big publishing houses got into trouble in the late 1970s with the
advent of the “megabook”: sales of books
from established authors for millions of dollars per book, which starved the
midlist, where good writers could previously earn a living wage while
developing. Publishers would bet so much
money on so few books, that the incubator of talent (books from 20-70K) was destroyed. From this came the “instant books” and the
scandal books, all following this model of a very few expensive books surrounded
by “filler” cheapie books, and the wholesale dumbing down of publishing really
took hold. That, plus changes in the tax
laws which meant that warehousing books became a debit, really hurt traditional
models. The big publishing houses
treated their non-megabook writers increasingly badly, and so the option of the
indie publisher became more attractive:
writers who wouldn’t get a lot of money or promotion in any case were
attracted to anyplace that would treat them with respect. With the advent of e-books, the landscape
became even more confused.

Chris
and I left big publishing in the early nineties to do nonfiction work for the
government. We were lured back to
publishing by the advent of the e-book and the indie publishers: although we had commanded upper midlist
advances in the old days, we were unhappy with the way our books were handled
and wanted to try indie publishing. Since
we’d had a number of titles pirated as crude, poorly produced e-books on
multiple pirate sites over a long period of time, we reasoned that if we
produced high quality e-books, people might buy them. We wanted better covers, better proofreading,
better production values than we’d had in the old days, and we didn’t want to
give up our e-rights as part of a traditional publishing deal. At the time we explored this “keep the e-rights”
issue, my agent said that unless we were willing to sell the e-rights, we
couldn’t get a good conventional publishing deal. So we became indies. I think more and more writers will do this,
out of a mix of frustration and self-preservation.

As to
what indies can learn from the big firms:
improvement in professionalism in all areas of publishing, including front
matter, copyediting, proofreading, and all phases of book presentation;
establishment of safe and reliable print and e-book distribution networks;
acceptance by authors’ organizations as trusted, respectable publishers;
development of effective promotional strategies. Agents and other entities are establishing
“concierge” services for authors, but the situation for indie and e-publishers
is fluxing. This is the Wild West of
e-commerce: some will adapt and survive,
some will fail.

As
for the remaining big publishers, to compete with the indies they must offer
better deals to authors, not worse; and raise, not lower, their literary standards: expanding the midlist would be a start. With a huge number of homemade books
available and vast quantities of quality books available free, from classics to
books from brand-new authors, the print publishers must find a way to adapt and
attract writers by offering better royalty deals and additional
incentives. Otherwise, those who publish
mega-bestsellers will find their catalogues continuing to shrink. Big publishers and libraries are already at
odds over how many copies of an e-book a library may freely lend before having
to buy the e-book again. In this case, I
think the publishers are right: like any
other software product, an e-book purchase should allow a certain number of
people to use the book, not an infinite number; that number should be the
average number of uses that the library expects from a printed book.

And
then of course there is piracy: the
attitude that piracy must be accepted and ignored must change, or e-commerce
not only of books, but of software, will join other facets of the entertainment
industry such as movies and music, that have been so tremendously damaged by theft. Entertainment is a major U.S. export, and our
whole economy is being harmed by ignoring these thefts. We do not in any way believe that piracy helps
sales, since sales figures don’t included piracy figures, and authors don’t get
increases in standings, or royalties, based on books stolen, only on books
sold. And this is the crux of the
matter: the author isn’t getting paid
for a book that is pirated. Since I
doubt that anyone in any other industry would accept not getting paid for their
work, the author should not be forced to work for free. I want to be paid my royalty on every book
sold, even if it is purchased by a library, and then I want libraries to buy a
new copy when the average life-span of a physical book would require a
repurchase (such as after twenty-five uses).
The big publishers COULD offer more shelter from piracy than can the indies,
but are not seriously pursuing pirates because it will cost them money to do so.

A
topical variant of this is the Google Books debacle, wherein Google takes up to
eighty (!) pages of titles it wants and puts them online free. In some of my books and anthologies where I
have contributed, eighty pages means that my entire contribution (such as a
short story) may be available on Google Books for nothing. At least thirty-three of my titles showed up
on Google books after a cursory search.
In this case, the Author’s Guild is mounting a class action suit, but
this is still a good example of places where the establishment publishers could
lead the way by acting in the interest of writers.

The writing community can be its own
worst enemy at times. What are some of the issues you see cropping up in the
Indie world? Solutions?

I
have touched on piracy, above. We would
like to see extreme enforcement measures taken against pirates in the US as
well as abroad, which would require a government enforcement arm allowed to
destroy on identification: send the
pirates underground.

Indie
publishers need to improve the quality of their editions, and the way they
treat their writers, as well. Indies
could be the home of the great writers of tomorrow and many fine writers
already writing, if indies took the quality issues seriously. Because anyone can now publish a book, the
numbers of books available are very high and the quality varies dramatically. Indies must find a way to bring attention to
their publications and convince writers that having a quality indie house publish
their works is better than the writers doing the work themselves. Perseid Publishing, our fledgling indie, offers
better editing and better proofing than most houses, traditional or indie. We have had a series of books brought to us
because the proprietors thought they would get better treatment from us in
areas where we care deeply, such as content, quality, covers and book
production values. Internet-based
promotion is becoming a bigger and bigger issue: no one yet knows what is useful, what is
not. Indies who can bring books to the
attention of readers will prosper, assuming the books are readable.

The social media is…

The
social media is something I do not understand.
I use it experimentally on book pages and blog pages and entities such
as Twitter, to see if it will increase awareness of books, but we cannot tell
if it helps or is simply a way for people to tell others what they had for
dinner the night before. Social media
takes a great deal of time, and many people who might otherwise be reading are
typing quips of 150 characters or less. We
have successfully created a “secret” working group on a big social media site
for our shared universe “Heroes in Hell,” and that has been very useful: people can share works in progress, ideas, discuss
story lines, share characters. We establish
story arcs, keep each other informed of how stories are coming. Chris and I and our “Muse of Hell, Sarah
Hulcy, assign characters and approve story segments and approve synopses or
help people integrate their work on a per volume basis: a book like “Lawyers in Hell” or its
follow-on, “Rogues in Hell,” would not have been anywhere near as cohesive
before the advent of social media fora.

What is one question
you are sick of being asked—not in interviews, but by individuals who know you
write?

The
questions we are asked range from “What kind of car do you drive?” “How much do
you earn?” to “Where do you get your ideas?”
“How do you get an agent?” and now “What do you think of self-publishing? “Is the novel dead?” remains a perennial
favorite. Often we are asked if we will
read someone’s pet project. Infrequently
are we asked questions relevant to the books themselves.

There
is a better questioner, who wants to know things such as “How do you get
started writing a particular story?” or “How do you find a character?” I deal with those people more seriously,
since the sort of help they need is the sort I can provide.

How do you deal with
negative reviews?

My first book, “High Couch of Silistra”
(which we haven’t reissued yet, but will) http://www.amazon.com/High-Couch-Silistra-Janet-Morris/dp/0553105221
was published by Bantam and talked about sexuality, genetic bases of behavior, power
and emotion, in times when such subjects were only emerging as acceptable
topics in science fiction or fantasy. The
Silistra Quartet is about a smart, strong, female in a culture where
reproduction and power are accounted differently than on Earth. Its first cover started the sword-wielding
brass-bra craze and mothered generations of imitators. “High Couch of Silistra” was first reviewed in
the New York Times Sunday Book Review, which meant the genre press couldn’t
ignore it. A.J. Budrys was commissioned
by “The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction” and by “Omni” to review it,
and gave the book two diametrically opposed reviews within the same month: one positive, the other saying, “[...]dirty
as hell.” Today, “the universe’s most
erotic courtesan,” in Fred Pohl’s words, seems relatively tame, but at the time
Silistra ignited a furor. I saw Budrys
at a convention soon after and asked, “How could you do that – two opposite
reviews of the same book?” He said, “For
money.” Thereafter, for many years, I
refused to read reviews, and told my publishers not to send them to me, even
though Silistra was much praised by tastemakers such as John Clute.

Most print reviews in the heyday of 20th
century publishing were determined by whether the publisher bought an expensive
lunch for the reviewer to present the book personally, or simply sent it
along. There was a symbiosis between big
publishers and big review organizations that, if the reviewer was not in New
York, provided other ways for the publisher to indicate to the review organ
which books it thought important (such as buying big ads in the trades). Sometimes, with books such as “High Couch of
Silistra” (which had multiple printings of its first edition, multiple foreign
language sales, and was part of a four-book series that saw over 4M copies in
print as the fourth volume was being published), a book can break out of
category and surprise everyone. Then the
question was, will the reviewers help, or try to hinder a book that they didn’t
recognize as one that might succeed? And
will the publisher support a book that sells outside the genre to which it was
targeted? We had this problem with the
Baen hardcover, The 40-Minute War, which got a wonderful “Publishers’ Weekly”
review (out of genre) that infuriated Simon and Schuster, which complained to
Baen that he wasn’t supposed to be publishing anything but science-fiction or
fantasy. In the ensuing political battle
between the imprint and the publishing giant, the book was greatly harmed – because
of positive reviews that were out of genre.

These days, secondary source reviews are
important in places like Wikipedia pages.In general, with the object lesson of two divergent reviews from the
same ‘credentialed reviewer’ in mind, I came to feel that if you believe the
good reviews, you must also believe the bad ones, so I chose to look at reviews
as individual opinion.When the reviewer
is so ignorant as to use “it’s” where “its” is proper, or to misuse grammar in
the review, I ignore it altogether, even if it is positive.Now, with an entire new set of “reader
reviewers” and “blog reviewers,” who review many books very fast, I look for
indications that the person who is reviewing the book actually read it, rather
than skimmed it.If I see a review
complaining that a book has a political stance that doesn’t agree with the
reviewer’s – or talking about a stylistic quirk rather than the story, I ignore
that – since often this sort of review is perfunctory.

When I get bad reviews (which isn’t
often), it tends to be for one of two reasons:
the reader has a political bone to pick, and we’re not politically
correct; or the reader hasn’t the vocabulary to read the book or the time to
spend to read the book: you can’t speed-read
our work. Usually such reviewers write
so poorly that they unmask themselves early on, so I pay them little attention.

The qualified reviewers stand out, and
they know what kind of books they like, and what kind of books they don’t like. Aside from the reader-reviewers who are
merely trying to get large numbers of reviews under their by-line, with so many
books available, independent reviewers try to review either something they’ll
like or something they’ll hate, depending on what kind of review they prefer to
write. The hate reviewers leave a trail,
and such people have always been there.
Readers soon learn who they are, and pay them little mind.

Today having many good “reader reviews”
is thought to help a book, and I welcome those whenever I read them. Like any other occupation, reviewers vary in
quality and good ones – who will read the book and who can give the reader an
idea of what the book is, and is not – are hard to find but very helpful. So I pay most attention to the
reader-reviewers, the blog reviewers, and the independent reviewers – although
in that group there are admittedly people as unqualified as in any other.

How much reading do you
get in, and can a writer excel at his or her craft if they do not read?

A writer MUST read. A writer should be literate. Writers learn best from reading writers who
are better than they are, such as the writers of the Western literary
canon. Variations in style, tricks and
flights of fancy, and the proper use of punctuation are learned by reading
better writers. Writers who want a
bestseller and who read only derivative, poorly-crafted works by current
bestselling writers are not reading anything that can truly help them. Today, financial success and artistic success
are often confused and conflated. Bestsellerdom
is two parts politics, one part caprice, and one part timing; talent has little
to do with success in one’s lifetime:
the market moves faster than a copycat can imitate. I read all the time. Because when I am writing fiction, I read
nonfiction and vice versa, what I read will vary depending on when I am asked. I also read submissions (which can be troubling,
due to lack of skill on the part of those submitting), and I read ancient
works, sometimes many times, or read the same work from different
translators. I reread books I read long
ago; I find that today my ability to appreciate Shakespeare and Chaucer and
Milton and Byron and Dante and Roman and Greek writers and even Henry James and
Evelyn Waugh and P.G. Wodehouse and Marguerite Yourcenar is much greater than
when I was younger.

As for writers who are not literate: they will not be able to please me; I spend
little time on writers who are not in some way unique in voice – and that requires
assimilation of the great literature of the past. I have little patience for people who haven’t
read the basics important to our art and seminal to our craft, and this lack of
understanding shows in everything they do, from how they construct sentences to
how they use plot drivers.

Right now, I am reading, “Early Riders,”
Lattimore’s “Iliad, “ Bloom’s “Hamlet:
Poem Unlimited” and banging around in Ovid and Sophocles. Chris and I just finished rereading “Paradise Lost,” Milton’s best, aloud, and are
going on to more of him and Marlowe this fall.
When I have a bit more time, I’m intending to do the whole of Diodorus
Siculus.

When does
self-promotion cross the line and become a nuisance?

I
am the wrong person for this question. I
am very uncomfortable with self-promotion.
I have read all the discussions about being accessible, and I have been
trying to do that through Facebook. I
have a blog, sacredband.wordpress.com and another one, paradisemorgans.wordpress.com
and I do a bit on twitter. I haven’t yet
found respondents on any of these who want to engage in literary discussion or
more than pleasant chitchat. But this
time is time I could be using to write.
When I am writing draft, I want as little external input as possible,
and so then my time on the web dwindles.

This
introspective nature may be a debit, with everyone else screaming at the top of
their lungs how great they are, but it is common among more serious writers. We
do acknowledge the necessity of self-promotion and our complete unfitness for
it. Nevertheless, on FB we are
attempting to make people aware of books we’ve published and will be
publishing.

What projects are you
currently working on?

Our current projects include “Dreamers
in Hell,” the follow-on to “Rogues in Hell,” and a new Sacred Band novel,
untitled. We are working on developing some
sort of web activity that will help talented people in a creative webinar
format – people who have real ability but need aid sorting out what are useful
guidelines for writers and how to create an organic work; and once that is
done, how to take the work forward toward the best book that person can
write. We’re known as tough but good
editors, and we hope we can find a way to transfer some of what we know to more
than one person at a time.

What is one thing about
you that would surprise the readers who do not know you personally?

Let’s
see: I am very shy. I hate public appearances, especially in
minimally structured environments. When
I’m doing TV or other interviews, I have no idea what I’m going to say: some Muse in my brain takes over and uses my
mouth. I have learned when to trust that
I will be ready, or that if I am not ready, it’s too late to fix it.

It is no secret that I
am a huge fan, what writers are you a fan of, and who makes you feel starstruck?

I
love Homer, first of all. Homer is
always new for me. I love Marcus
Aurelius and wish I’d read him in my twenties.
I admire Roger Penrose, have followed his career for years, and am very
happy he has repudiated the quantum popularizers with whom he worked for a
time I love Shakespeare, Milton, Marlowe. I
love Jules Verne and Edgar Rice Burroughs.
I love Robert E. Howard. I love
Henry James. I love Xenophon. Most of all, if you’ve read my work, you know
I love Herakleitos of Ephesos, Thales, and the pre-Socratics in general. And I am very fond of Ancient Near Eastern texts,
from Gilgamesh and Kikkuli onward. I
love Plato and Aristotle (though for a time I blamed all the world’s ills on
Aristotle). I love so many writers... moderns
such as Yourcenar, Renault, Kipling, Eisenhower and Churchill. And I have a taste for Sun Tzu, Confucius,
Clauswitz, Disraeli. I love the modern
poets and the classical poets and even the Victorian poets, up to a point, and
that point is Byron and Shelley. I like
Jefferson, Einstein, Kafka. I enjoy
brilliant critics and pundits such as Russell Baker and Bloom. Zola said art is life seen through a
temperament, and if the writer brings that to his work, I tend to enjoy his
work tremendously.

Is there anyone you’d
like to give a mention?

I absolutely want to mention Chris
Morris’ contribution. Although people
think of me as a consistent force who has worked in several collaborations,
Chris Morris has always been and continues to be both my co-writer and
editor. Sometimes he titles books or
stories or defines and clarifies ideas; sometimes he rewords or suggests
deletions or expansions. Always he and I
agree on what will be covered in the next day’s draft; when that draft is done
he reads every draft sentence aloud and we argue out changes. When we attribute a story to one of us or the
other , that attribution comes from who had the original idea. We have grown into a two-headed monster of a
sort: if pressed, on some passages I
cannot say what he wrote and what I wrote.
In the early days, writing fiction was more my bailiwick and writing
lyrics, his. But no longer. And the
books are better for it.

What is in your “to be
read” pile right now?

“Measure
for Measure” and “Troilus and Cressida,” by Shakespeare. “Tamburlaine the Great,” by Marlowe. Three novel manuscripts, including one from
Douglas McKittrick, a new writer we’re excited about. Many stories for “Dreamers in Hell.” Diodorus
Siculus, “Bibliotheca historica.” Final
revision of Michael A. Armstrong’s “Bridge Over Hell.” Harold Bloom’s “Genius.” “How to Kill a Dragon: Aspects of
Indo-European Poetics,” by Calvert Watkins.

Thanks so much to Janet Morris for a very detailed interview. I appreciate all the time. Now, all you who have enjoyed meeting her, go check out a book or five.

About Me

TW Brown is the author of the Zomblog series, DEAD series, and That Ghoul Ava series. He is deeply immersed in
pursuing his dream of being a “full-time” writer while trying to balance the
duties of husband, father, friend, and Border Collie owner. He keeps busy
reading and editing the numerous submissions for a variety of upcoming
anthologies and full-length titles for May December Publications. He has had short stories published by Pill
Hill Press, Living Dead Press, and others.